Hopkins School
New Haven
Centuries of Service
It’s ‘cool to be smart’ at 350-year-old Hopkins School. It’s even cooler to give back
High school and middle school students nationwide get involved in efforts to help the wider community, volunteering their time and money to support a variety of charitable endeavors. It’s a rare school, though, that emphasizes community service as strongly as does Hopkins School in New Haven.
At Hopkins, a deep involvement in community service is an integral part of a remarkable culture of learning and personal development that has produced countless generations of community leaders since the school was founded in 1660 as Hopkins Grammar School on the New Haven Green.
Since the 1920s the school has been situated atop a hill overlooking the city from a 108-acre campus in the Westville section, at 986 Forest Road. It has relocated eight times and incorporated other schools over the years, but Hopkins remains committed to its original mission set out in 1657 by Edward Hopkins: “… for the breeding up of hopeful youths for the public service of the country in future times.”
Students, teachers and alumni are celebrating the school’s 350th anniversary this year, looking back on an illustrious history of training future trailblazers while looking forward to future challenges.
“Our No. 1 challenge today is keeping the school accessible to students regardless of ability to pay,” explains Barbara M. Riley, whose title is Head of School. “We want the kids who will thrive here, who are willing and able to do a lot of hard work.”
School officials are working on a plan to add $5 million to the school’s $50 million endowment to fund new financial-aid initiatives, Riley says. About 17 percent of students currently receive financial aid. Tuition for the 2009-10 school year is $29,400.
Hopkins School fosters a demanding academic environment while giving students an abundance of attention, including personal advisors. Class sizes are kept small, with an average of 12 students per class, and teachers use the Harkness method, a student-centered format where instructors facilitate discussion during class rather than serve up lectures. Students at Hopkins receive a liberal arts education that includes Latin along with an emphasis on learning how to think critically. The school also fosters interests in athletics and the arts.
“These are kids who come here because they really want to learn,” says David I. Newton, president of the school’s Committee of Trustees. “They have an inherent thirst for the kind of teaching that takes place here.”
Newton, a 1967 Hopkins graduate, is president of Elm Advisors, LLC, a real estate development and consulting firm in New Haven. He previously served as director of University Properties at Yale, is a trustee of Long Wharf Theatre and serves on the boards of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and the New Haven Road Race.
Newton’s passion for the school and for public service was apparent on a recent tour of the campus, where he pointed out the three new buildings that have gone up over the past decade — a junior high classroom building and arts center, a science center, and a new dining facility.
Reading, Writing and Service
The Hopkins School has 685 students in grades 7-12, and each one of them is exposed to multiple ways of contributing to the greater New Haven community, or to the world at large. Students quickly raised more than $4,000 for aid to Haiti after a January 12 earthquake devastated the nation.
Closer to home, Hopkins students have become one of the largest contributors to the Connecticut Food Bank. This year the students have raised $54,000 for the food bank, which will pay for 183,000 meals, says Janet Kniffin, the non-profit’s chief development officer.
“They are one of our top fund-raisers, and they are wonderful kids,” Kniffin says. “It’s always a meaningful day to us when the [contribution] envelope arrives from Hopkins, because that envelope represents the spirit of a whole new generation of philanthropists who are learning they can make a huge difference in our communities. If they learn philanthropy now, it will stay with them for a lifetime.”
Hopkins students began raising funds for the Connecticut Food Bank in 1991, and since that time the school has contributed $479,000 to the food distribution center, Kniffin says.
Another major effort at Hopkins is called Breakthrough New Haven. Previously known as Summerbridge, this is a tuition-free program of education and advocacy for middle-school students in New Haven public and parochial schools with high potential for achievement but limited economic and educational opportunities. It features a strong focus on developing academic skills, nurturing a love of learning and promoting a sense of community.
Breakthrough New Haven also serves as a workshop in education by providing teaching opportunities to college undergraduates and Hopkins students interested in teaching.
Following is a list of just some of the community service programs in which Hopkins students play a leading role:
• After-School Tennis — A tennis clinic for New Haven public school children.
• Aracy’s Friends — Arts and writing program for children who are patients at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
• Barnard Tutoring — Students tutor children at a nearby elementary school.
• Book Drive — Students present books to elementary school children and their libraries.
• Columbus House — Students serve dinner to residents of the homeless shelter.
• Gift Drive — Students buy holiday presents for children from St. Luke’s Parish.
• Habitat for Humanity — Students help build homes in the New Haven area.
• Hopkins Cares — Students visit a home for the mentally disabled.
• Midnight Run — Students help deliver clothing to homeless people in New York City.
• Pie in the Sky — Students help prepare pies to benefit AIDS Project New Haven.
• Peer Tutoring — Students tutor other Hopkins students who want help in a specific subject.
• Surfing USA — A program started and developed by Hopkins students to teach senior citizens to use computers.
Hopkins students also regularly organize blood drives and park clean-ups and give musical and dramatic performances for seniors and hospitalized children.
Eliza Halsey, who graduated from Hopkins in 1996 and went on to graduate from Yale in 2001, provides an example of the influence such a community focus can have. Halsey, 31, is director of quality assurance and evaluation for Public Allies, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit leadership development organization. She is based in New Haven.
A New Haven native, Halsey traveled to Nepal to work with street children there for a year after earning a history degree from Yale, then returned to the U.S. and joined LEAP, a youth development organization based in New Haven. She joined Public Allies in 2004.
“Hopkins really encourages students to be well rounded, and that served me well both for college and for my career,” says Halsey. “It was a rigorous academic environment, which helped prepare me for college and offered me different opportunities to grow as an individual.”
While at Hopkins, Halsey developed her interest in public service by participating in Breakthrough New Haven and Hopkins Cares as well as working as a tutor. “Working with young people and doing leadership development is still a big focus of my work,” she says.
Through the Generations
Hopkins has produced countless scientists, scholars and leaders, a list that gives a clear idea of the depth and breadth of the school’s influence. Some of the more recent notable graduates include Harold Koh, current legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State and former dean of Yale Law School; Guido Calabresi, a U.S. Court of Appeals judge and former Yale Law School dean; Paul B. MacCready Jr., a renowned aeronautical engineer; John C. Malone, chairman of Liberty media and CEO of Discovery Holding Co.; film director Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Surrogates); composer Charles Ives; Walter Camp, pioneering football coach; Edward Bouchet, a physicist and the first African-American to graduate from Yale and earn a Ph.D. from an American university; and Mei Chin, an award-winning writer based in New York City.
Dick Ferguson is another accomplished Hopkins alumnus, having graduated in 1963. A Hamden native, Ferguson went on to start a radio station in Bridgeport, WEZN-FM (a/k/a Star 99.9), which he built into a national company, NewCity Communications, that owned radio stations around the country before he sold it to Cox Radio in 1996, where he became chief operating officer. Ferguson retired from Cox in 2006 and continues to do consulting work in broadcasting while concentrating on work with several nonprofit organizations. His father attended Hopkins in the 1930s.
“My father really believed in giving back, and that was a big influence in my life, but Hopkins certainly reinforced that,” says Ferguson, 64, who lives in Westport. “One of the reasons I went into radio was because I thought radio stations are a really important part of the fabric of the community. They provide a great way to raise money and to galvanize people to focus on issues in the community.”
Today Ferguson is a Hopkins trustee and is deeply involved in the Achievement First program at Amistad Academy, a New Haven charter school. He also is board chairman at Elm City Prep, a sister school to Amistad.
Ferguson credits the teachers at Hopkins for providing good role models in terms of community service, and for imparting community-oriented values into the students. Nearly a half-century after he graduated, Ferguson can rapidly reel off the names of a dozen of his former teachers with no hesitation.
“The transfer of values came from very, very strong faculty members,” he says.
Ferguson was a “work scholar,” meaning that since his parents couldn’t afford the tuition at Hopkins, he worked in the school kitchen to help pay his way through. He has since given back by funding tuition for Bridgeport public high school students to attend summer school at Hopkins, in cooperation with fellow alumnus Malone. Two of Ferguson’s three children are currently enrolled at Hopkins, a son in the eighth grade and a daughter who is a junior.
“I learned the value of education, and I realized that I was in a really special place,” Ferguson says. “It’s about learning how to think. At Hopkins, it’s cool to be smart.”
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